Personal and commercial transportation vehicles such as automobiles, trucks and motorcycles are being built to achieve increasing levels of driver and passenger comfort, such that shock, vibration and exterior road noise are all but eliminated from the interior compartment. State-of-the-art, high performance radios, CD and DVD players with surround-sound and multiple speakers and powerful subwoofers are increasingly common in most vehicles to better entertain and further mask virtually all exterior interferences to rider comfort and pleasure. The ubiquity of integral and portable communication devices, such as cellular telephones and increasingly sophisticated telematics such as GPS, further serve to preoccupy and distract drivers and passengers on our increasingly congested roads. Even motorcyclists can now purchase sophisticated and powerful audio, communication and navigation systems that serve to isolate the rider even more than what is already the case due to wearing a helmet. These facts, combined with the growing number of aging and infirmed drivers with impaired hearing and vision, as well as adverse environmental factors such inclement weather and glaring sun, make the difficult and dangerous business of effective road cautions and emergency vehicle response that much more difficult and dangerous.
This invention anticipates a comprehensive, separately attached, integrated or stand-alone, secure localized point-to-point wireless communication system designed to address those and other difficulties, improving awareness of road cautions and reducing emergency vehicle response time, thus improving overall safety of everyone affected by the alert situation, while minimizing the risk of personal injury and property damage, particularly while in a moving vehicle.
This invention further anticipates a wireless communication traffic calming, cautioning, early warning and emergency notification system that when activated, as either a stand-alone unit or as a separately attached or integrated unit which ‘commandeers’ an available computer or audio/video system with one or more speakers, interrupting radio, television, audio or video tape, CD or DVD playback to transmit an ‘alert notification’ message (pre-configured or, with a manual override transmitter system, custom message) is able to communicate point-to-point with any vehicle or fixed location (personal or commercial residence or business facility) within a pre-defined or specified perimeter, giving affected individuals an audio and/or visual warning (using existing speakers and/or separate speakers and/or a separate display indicator (e.g. LED, LCD) or panel (e.g. 2 line.times.14 character dot-matrix vacuum fluorescent flat panel display), or a.c. thin-film electroluminescent (ACTFEL) display as to the nature of the potential hazard or caution.
This invention further anticipates that this wireless functionality can be provided as an add-on unit or integral functionality to any electronic, computer or audio/video system for vehicles, residences and businesses for cautioning, early warning and emergency alert notifications, whether host system is on or not.